


Letting Dead Dogs Lie

by GetDreamy



Series: The Grim of the Society for Arcane Science [3]
Category: The Glass Scientists (Webcomic)
Genre: - at least i think it is??, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Backstory, Buried Alive, Canon Backstory, Death, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Death, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Spirit Animals, Trauma, Tumblr Prompt, Zosi is a good boy, mention of corpses, mentions of being buried alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29982138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GetDreamy/pseuds/GetDreamy
Summary: Church Grims were never named, either as living or dead, but only scraps of the superstition against them were actually true. When a small church in Soho gets destroyed in an explosion, one particular Church Grim’s whole world turns upside down, but there is yet hope; hope that smells like peppermint.//Originally posted on my Tumblr blog @ Bansheeoftheforest, requested by an IRL friend and beta-read by @ ineffable-idjit//
Relationships: Zosi & Dr Henry Jekyll, Zosimos & Dr Henry Jekyll
Series: The Grim of the Society for Arcane Science [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206272
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	Letting Dead Dogs Lie

**Author's Note:**

> *sigh* here I go again, posting yet another Zosi oneshot... Am I complaining though? Absolutely not. This one also is for childhood friend who, despite not having read a single page of the webcomic more than the strips with Zosi because I spammed her with them, wanted to give me a prompt... Heh, “Something wholesome about the doggy”... I mean... It’s wholesome in the end, right? ;P
> 
> Pardon for any weird formatting as well!

Church Grims don’t have names; everyone knew that. They were merely dead animals who had been buried alive into the walls or soil of churches and graveyards to protect the spirit of the dead from demons and evil souls. Of course, it was always the first soul buried that became a Grim, regardless of species, but after a while, most churches had come to an agreement that dogs, man’s best friend, would do a much better job at protecting the dead.

The church was new; built in a run-down district in Soho for the poor who didn’t have the time nor energy after long shifts at the nearby factories to travel all the way across the River Thames every Sunday to pray. The church was tiny and squeezed in between buildings, looking quite out of place compared to the tall apartment buildings surrounding it, and the graveyard made up most of its space. The church tried to spend the little funds they had left after the actual construction of the building to buy a dog, but the small scraps they had left barely made up for a mutt. After all, a Church Grim needed to be a big, black dog who would be strong enough to protect the dead from the Devil himself. Desperate for anything they could find as the dead waiting to be buried in the graveyard started to pile up, the priest found a tiny little black dog wandering the streets. He was a sorrowful, yet happy little thing; his fur was thick, dirtied and matted and he was extremely thin, and yet he wagged his tail and barked happily when the priest knelt down and scratched him behind his ears and fed him some sausage. Normally, dogs destined to be Grims were gloomy and aggressive, so it almost saddened the priest to have to offer up the terrier, but he knew it was for the greater good... Though the priest would never forget the whimpers and panicked barks that the dog let out when they put him in a shallow grave and started piling dirt, just a few weeks later.

However, the Grim was okay with his new state of being. He couldn’t feel hunger or fatigue, nor could he feel any physical pain, which was much better than his life as a stray. Of course, no one dared to go up and pet him anymore -not that a lot had done that in his life, anyway- but the priest continued to scratch him on his head from time to time. The priest had been in his field of work for many, many years, so he knew he had no reason to fear the Grim; only bad souls and evil spirits did. 

The Grim did not feel or recognise the passing of time, so his only indication that time passed at all was the seasonal changes; but due to the gloomy weather of London, that didn’t indicate a lot either. He saw as his church began to run down due to all of its use and lack of people who actually cared about it, and his priest was far too old to get it to its full potential, but the Church Grim didn’t mind. After all, his job was to simply protect the dead, who quickly began to fill the graveyard. Some authorities wanted some graves to become mass pits; they couldn’t just dump the bodies in the river and the little space they had for graves was quickly used up, though no one dared to put a shovel in an already-occupied grave when the undead terrier would glare and growl at them. They would all run away and drop their tools before the Grim could even bark.

It all started out as a slow day; only a baptism broke the silence around the church and the churchyard and everything was going on as usual. The priest did his routine and his ritual and then the family returned home to have a small celebration. Dusk broke but no one could really see it through the giant, dark clouds that had occupied the sky, preparing for rain. The Grim had always hated the rain, and while he might not be able to feel it all that much anymore, he still absolutely hated getting his paws wet. He slunk around gravestones and through flower bushes until he managed to take shelter under the facade of the church, however, he was alert. A bad feeling was welling in his little ribcage and he looked around, staring out around the churchyard… Something was about to happen. The church had long since been emptied, the only person left in the building was the priest.

It happened in barely a blink of an eye; a deafening explosion erupted and the sky lit up with flames. Screams echoed throughout the whole neighbourhood and chaos ensued. The Grim couldn’t even process what had just happened when the screams got louder and the ground began to shake. The last thing he heard was an ear-piercing scream of pain from within the church before the whole building collapsed right over him.

  
  


…  
How long had he been here, buried under the rubble?

  
There was no light, no air. He was lucky that he was already dead, otherwise, he would have suffocated a long time ago.

He wasn’t sure if it was the ringing in his ears or the sound of actual people that he could hear. He swore he could still hear screams. 

An explosion..?

There was a factory nearby; relatively new but well crowded… Something must have gone wrong… What else could have caused such chaos?

Church Grims were known for their supernatural prowess and strength, and yet the terrier was far too weak to try to move the rubble away from him. It felt just like when he got buried alive; dark, air-tight, cold and he was completely immobilized. Could Church Grims die? How else would he be able to get out? How long would it take? If he was found, he would probably get shot at sight…

Wait.  
  


Was that a voice?

It sounded like a voice.

Despite being an undead guardian, the terrier got filled with hope. Be it for getting out of here at all or just the comfort of actually hearing someone nearby. He couldn’t help but to whimper, just as pitifully as he had when they began to bury him in the holy ground. 

But then the voice suddenly stopped. 

The poor terrier began to whimper even more. No, the voice couldn’t leave him! He had to get out of here, he had to protect the church, he had to…

  
Then the debris over him began to move. Someone was digging him out! Come on, you are so close! Just a little bit more…

A gleam of light broke out. The poor dog got violently blinded but whoever was digging him out wasn’t stopping. He could feel rubbish crumbling and falling into his eyes and he hissed softly, and then he could feel two warm, slender, glove-clad hands grabbing him, dragging him out the last bit and holding him up into the sunlight. 

“Oh, you poor thing…” 

The little Grim blinked away the dirt in his eyes and opened them, and then immediately sneezed. Holding him was a tall, lanky man with curly, brown hair and red eyes, though the boldest thing the dog noticed with him was his strong smell of peppermint. It tickled the poor dog in his nose and that combined with dust continued to make him sneeze, over and over. The peppermint man just cradled him against his chest and stroked his hand over the black dog’s fur, soothing him. The poor Grim couldn’t help but whine softly.

“Uh, doctor? Is that…?” Another voice said. The man who was holding the Church Grim turned around towards the voice, and the guardian could hear the man’s heart thump against his chest. “Is that a _Grim?”_

There was no denying that the terrier was a Church Grim. His eyes were as red as blood and he had giant patches of open flesh and bones littered all over his body. Only one of his legs were whole and the rest were clean bones, and you could see right into his ribcage from the side. At first, the man had even thought it was just the corpse of a poor stray who had tried to seek shelter from the rain by the church, and yet it had only taken a moment to realize what the dog actually was. No one could miss it, and yet the peppermint-smelling man was cradling the black dog like you would when you found your favourite doll as a child, not caring that the dog was extremely dirty, though the Grim also quickly noticed that the man was careful to not touch him on his open spots.

“Most definitely, yes.” Replied the man. His voice was soft and soothing and definitely was the voice that the Grim had been able to hear through all of the debris. It was calm and so comforting… If the Grim had been a cat, the poor boy might have started to purr. 

“A-are you actually _holding_ it? Don’t you know that those- that those _things_ are _cursed?_ ” Replied a third voice. The Grim, who had just started to snooze in the doctor’s arms, opened his eyes and looked at the men that were talking to his saviour. Both of them wore blue uniforms and seemed to be policemen. They had been crawling all over Soho during the last few days, so the dog knew the sight of them all too well.

“Now, now, I _know_ that Church Grims have a bad reputation, but I can assure you that this good boy is not cursed. Spooked, yes, but not cursed.” Despite his calm and confident voice, the Grim could hear the loud thumping of the heart in the man’s rib cage. However, he kept a steady grip on the dog and held him close to his chest. “I can assure you that it’s all just superstition. After all, they are just supposed to guard their church, but…” The man glanced back, and the dog took a moment to do so as well.

What used to be a small, run-down and yet homely church looked more like a trash dump, leaving nothing more than a heap of old walls and roof and gravestones. Most of the apartment block wasn’t looking any better. Where the nave and altar used to be, the Grim could see policemen digging out a body. 

Everything was gone. Not only the church, but the graveyard and the priest were gone too… What was the Grim supposed to do now?

“I’m sorry, little guy.” The doctor murmured, hearing the small dog’s whimpers over the sound of the two policemen moving over the trash to help the others move the body. The doctor wondered for a long moment for how long the little dog had been under all that rubble. The explosion had been a few days ago; had he really been under all of that wreckage the whole time, despite being... Well, conscious?

 _‘At least’,_ the doctor thought, _‘it was fortunate that I could hear his whimpers. Otherwise, he might have been stuck under there for much longer.’_

There was no denying that it still was a massive tragedy that fate had not spared the priest quite as mercifully as the Grim. It hadn’t been until now that it was safe to start looking for wounded and bodies so a lot of people could be buried under what used to be buildings around here. Of course, Dr. Jekyll had to go and investigate it all too; he wanted to be useful and he wanted to help as many as he could... Though the police and actual investigators weren’t as keen on the idea of the doctor doing their dirty work; not because they didn’t trust him to do it right but rather because looking for bodies and moving all debris was hard labour, which a gentleman like Jekyll shouldn’t have to do... But clearly, he hadn’t been listening all that much, since he had immediately begun to dig when he heard whimpers. “What are we going to do with you now, huh?” 

The Grim closed his eyes, putting his head against the doctor’s arm, resting his head. He hadn’t felt this... Almost depressed since he was buried. His whole purpose was destroyed in mere seconds and it wasn’t like he could get a new graveyard. What was he supposed to do now? Well... Maybe he could just follow the kind man around. The doctor was still petting the black dog and holding him against his chest, giving him as much comfort as he could. His spirit was bright and good too... Yeah, that seemed like a good idea. It seemed like a very tempting idea, at the very least. The Grim turned his head just a little bit and opened one eye a bit mournfully, looking up at the doctor. The doctor just seemed to melt when the Church Grim looked at him like that. How could he ever think of leaving this little guy behind? If he left him on his own, some townsfolk would probably shoot him...  
  
“You know... You could come with me if you want to.” The doctor suggested quietly to the dog. He knew very well that Church Grims were extremely intelligent creatures, and so were Scottish terriers in general, so he knew that it probably would be best to try to communicate to the Grim and not do anything the Grim wouldn’t... ‘Agree’ to. The Grim in question just stared at the man, his boney tail wagging weakly while his red eyes shined. He was far too exhausted to really do anything but he still managed to wag his tail and huff a bit. The doctor just smiled softly, scratching the dog behind his ear. “Should I take that as a yes?” he chuckled softly. The little dog just gave off a slight yiff, which made his tongue stick out too and it earned another soft chuckle from the man. Yeah, there was no way he could leave this adorable little terrier behind.

Moving towards his carriage -or, well, the one he had borrowed-, Dr. Henry Jekyll wrapped the little dog in his coat to keep him warm, before placing him on one of the cushions. Normally, he would have gone back home immediately and gotten the dog cleaned up but he couldn’t just leave like that, so instead, he ordered the coachman to make sure that the little dog was comfortable while the doctor helped to search through the rubble for survivors or corpses. Hopefully, he would have come up with a good name for the little one once it was time to head home...

Much like expected, the doctor worked together with the policemen and volunteers the whole day. It was tragic, and the doctor was completely done by the time he stepped into the carriage and with a heavy sigh, sat down next to the little Grim and gently coached him into his lap. The little dog’s tail wagged at the mere sight of his new master, and he seemed to have a lot more energy now; trying to climb all over the doctor and sniff him. The light chuckle that he got back was definitely worth it, the Grim thought. The doctor didn’t even mind that the little dog made both of them even dirtier.

“You would need a name now, wouldn’t you?” The doctor suddenly spoke, ruffling the dirty dog’s fur. At this point, both of them were equally grimy, which made the doctor even happier to know that they were headed straight home so he could get both himself and his new companion cleaned up before anyone would be able to see them. 

The new companion in question, however, just tilted his head at his new master. A name? He wasn’t even sure he had one when he was living...  
  
“How about... Hmm...” The doctor thought for a moment. What about... Werther? No, no... Maybe something scientific... Isaac? Aristotle? Oh, he really ought to have came up with something while he was working... Oh, no, hold on... “What about Zosimos?” 

The rustling of joins echoed throughout the carriage as the terrier wagged its skeletal tail. He liked the name, Zosimos... This was probably the first name he had ever had. At least that he could remember, but he couldn’t remember much before his death anyway...  
  
“Zosi it is, then, huh? Little Zosimos... We will have to pick up a collar for you sometime. But first, we are going to get you home so I can clean you up.” The doctor hummed, smiling softly. He could imagine that Dr. Lanyon would be nowhere near happy with his friend’s new companion, but to be fair... Dr. Jekyll didn’t care. He couldn’t just leave the poor thing out in the rubble and risk him getting shot by superstitious townsfolk. Zosi just gave off a soft, excited bark before he finally settled down on the doctor’s lap, his eyes never leaving his saviour. He was going to protect the kind, peppermint-scented man with every breath, Zosi decided. He was going to be the best companion, the best boy... And he was going to make sure of that. No one would ever dare to hurt his Dr. Henry Jekyll.


End file.
